MADISON'S TENTH FEDERALIST
Purpose: popular gov. to control rivalry and violent factionalism
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union none deserves to be more
accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular
governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate as when he contemplates their
propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without
violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and
confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular
governments have everywhere perished, as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which
the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the
American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much
admired, but it would be an unwarrantable partiality to contend that they have as effectually obviated the
danger on this side as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most
considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal
liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival
parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the
minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we
may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence of known facts will not permit us to deny
that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation that some of
the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments;
but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest
misfortunes, and particularly for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements and alarm for
private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not
wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public
administrations.
Faction defined. Cures and causes considered. Relief in removing causes?
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the
whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights
of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by
controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which
is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and
the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to
faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to
abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the
annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive nature.
Mutual animosities and violent contention among factions
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man
continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the
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connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal
influence on each other, and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The
diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable
obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different
degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and
views of the respective proprietors ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man, and we see them everywhere brought
into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for
different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of
speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and
power, or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have,
in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more
disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this
propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities that, where no substantial occasion presents itself, the
most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite
their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and
unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed
distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors fall under a like
discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a money interest, with
many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations and divide them into different classes
actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms
the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and
ordinary operations of the government.
Regulating factions by their advocates or by a rare genius in government?
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause because his interest would certainly bias his judgment
and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to
be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation but
so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the
rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties
to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which
the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between
them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges, and the most numerous party or, in other
words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged,
and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures are questions which would be differently
decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice
and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which
seems to require the most exact impartiality, yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater
opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every
shilling with which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render
them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in
many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote
considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in
disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
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Relief in controlling effects.
The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is
only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
Effects controlled by the "republican principle" if a minority faction
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables
the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the
society, but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a
majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice
to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public
good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and
the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that
it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under
which it has so long labored and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
Means for controlling a majority faction
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same
passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented or the majority, having such coexistent
passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into
effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that
neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such
on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined
together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
Whether a democracy or a republic controls majority factions better
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society
consisting of a small number of citizens who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit
of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a
majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself, and there is
nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that
such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found
incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives
as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians who have patronized this species of
government have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political
rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their
opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a
different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which is
varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it
must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the
government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of
citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views by passing
them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of
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their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or
partial considerations. Under such a regulation it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the
representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people
themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious
tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first
obtain the suffrages and then betray the interests of the people. The question resulting is whether small or
extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is
clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:
Whether a large or small republic is better at controlling majority factions
In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must
be raised to a certain number in order to guard against the cabals of a few, and that, however large it may be,
they must be limited to a certain number in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence the
number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being
proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in
the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option and consequently a greater
probability of a fit choice.
In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than
in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious
arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free will be more
likely to center in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established
characters.
It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which
inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors you render the
representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it
too much, you render him unduly attached to these and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and
national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect: the great and
aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.
The other point of difference is the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be
brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government, and it is this circumstance
principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The
smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the
distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller
the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed,
the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a
greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a
common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more
difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other. Besides other
impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes,
communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.
Hence it clearly appears that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy in controlling the
effects of faction is enjoyed by a large over a small republic--is enjoyed by the Union over the States
composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views
and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be
denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does
it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party
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being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties
comprised within the Union increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed
to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again,
the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to
spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political
faction in a part of the Confederacy, but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure
the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts,
for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project will be less apt to pervade the
whole body of the Union than a particular member of it, in the same proportion as such a malady is more
likely to taint a particular county or district than an entire State.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases
most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being
republicans ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
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